Life at the intersection of finance and technology

Leading for change

I’ve been writing and tweeting lately about leadership, change, culture and diversity and wanted to share a few more thoughts on this confluence of topics today. Hopefully this isn’t too abstract but sometimes trying to write frequently means that it will take several shorter posts to get at the heart of a topic that I might have dug into more deeply in one more comprehensive post that I crafted over a longer period of time.

I wrote in my ‘leadership’ post last week about how the company where I work has made increasing inclusiveness a core goal for 2015 and it has been great to witness the rising tide of responsiveness to this goal from across the firm. This is one of a number of ways in which the leadership team is seeking to consciously change elements of our culture even while building on some of our core principles. We’ve never been a company that rejected diversity any more than we’ve been a firm committed to not thinking about sales; but growing in our embrace of inclusion (like learning how to sell and market effectively) is requiring us to think about the real implications of our fundamental values in a new context. There are core aspects of who we are that we would not want to lose (you can read this to understand why keeping your culture strong as you grow is vital: http://bit.ly/1pTxvR1) but there are also important ways we need to continue changing if we don’t want to stagnate as a company. I’m glad both that the leadership team is talking about these things and that so many people in our organization are responding well and furthering the conversation. We are sure to hit bumps in the road because in truth it’s not that simple, but there are hopeful signs that we are trying to move forward.